The planning for this trip started on September of 2016, with the fact that I had miles on Latam (Oneworld) and Avianca Brasil (Star Alliance). My initial try was Maldives and Seychelles. For my intended period, I could find seats on business class on both programs, either way, but it was impossible to match availability going to either island, transferring between them and returning back home. After about a month of frustrating searches and changes of itineraries, I gave up and decided to try something new.
I don´t know exactly how, but I came across SPG page of St. Regis Lijiang, which is due to open only in 2018. I had never heard of this city, but when I googled images from it, I liked what I saw and made it my head start. To get there, the easiest way was to fly to Chengdu and it wasn´t too difficult to find seats on either Qatar or British (which ended discontinuing this flight a few weeks later).
I tried to add a trip to Guilin for a cruise on Li River or to Zhangye Danxia National Park for the gorgeous rainbow mountains, but my total travel time of 7 days made these options unpractical. I was planning to head home from Bangkok to CDG on Thai A380 first class and then to Brazil on Swiss business class. Searching for flights form Lijiang to BKK came with great fares on business class with an almost 24 hours stop on Shenzhen, which I thought was an excellent addition to close my itinerary.
Booking flights wasn´t difficult, but required a trick: there weren´t seats available on Qatar business class flight from São Paulo to Doha, only from Doha to Chengdu. But if I was leaving from Buenos Aires, it was possible, the irony being that flight made a stop in São Paulo. It seems like this stop doesn´t make the EZE-DOH section count as an EZE-GRU-DOH section, so I could add to the ticket a flight from São Paulo to Buenos Aires (on the same plane that was going to do the turn around). This added 6 hours to my ticket, 2.5 hours on each leg of GRU-EZE-GRU plus one hour stop in Buenos Aires, but it wasn´t bad after all. This one way ticket GRU-EZE-GRU-DOH-CTU on Qatar business class costed 110k miles on Latam plus U$40 in taxes.
From Chengdu to Lijiang, I bought an economy class ticket on Air China for U$150 and from Lijiang to Shenzhen to Bangkok, I bought a business class ticket on China Southern for U$226. The flight from Bangkok to Paris on Thai first class costed 100k miles on Avianca Brasil plus U$20 and CDG-ZRH-GRU on Swiss business class costed 80k miles plus U$250, also on Avianca.
I was going to spend a night on 3 cities, and on all I used Amex FHR program to book the hotels, which ended up being Ritz Carlton Chengdu (U$230), Banyan Tree Lijiang (U$320) and St. Regis Shenzen (U$360).
I did have some miles (17k) expiring on Lufthansa by the end of year and didn´t have a good use to them, so I made a gamble. I booked an economy class ticket from Paris to Frankfurt, hoping Lufthansa would open space on first class 14 days before departure. The beauty of this ticket was that it wasn´t a straight CDG-FRA flight, but a CDG-ZRH-FRA flight, with enough time on the Zurich connection to let me experience the new Swiss First Class Lounge. For 17k miles plus U$58 in taxes, I tried my luck.
In the end, I hit the jackpot. Not only did Lufthansa open space on first class from Frankfurt to Rio, allowing me to go to the great Swiss Lounge, but I had, for the first time, a private first class cabin to myself, being the only passenger on the front of the lower deck of the Boeing 747-8. This costed 100k miles plus U$350 on Avianca, plus U$200 for cancelling my CDG-ZRH-GRU ticket, but it was totally worth it.
Here are my final flight paths and some pictures highlights of this trip, which I´ll share more details in the coming days.























Link to my previous reports:

RTW to Cairo and Petra (DL J, NH F, QR J, EK F, CM J, James Chicago, Conrad Cairo)


RTW in OW F - A USDM Farewell - Regent Taipei, Conrad Seoul, PH Shanghai

From below to down under the great long way (LH, EY, SQ F)

Conrad Istanbul and Koh Samui, Sofitel So Bangkok, St. Regis Doha (SQ F, QR F and J)

Weekend on NYC and Disney with family (Conrad NY, Homewood Universal and Brickell)